It would have been beyond foolish for the Baltimore Orioles to try to cull anything more out of fading starter Kyle Bradish .
And now they won't.
Bradish's rough start in Toronto Saturday will be his final for Baltimore in 2026, and while this season wasn't close to his 2023 form - when he received Cy Young consideration - it was also largely healthy and without heal incident until Sunday afternoon, when he was placed on the Injured List with lower abdominal discomfort, the team announced.
The larger reality is he was effectively shut down, which had to be the case after struggling with command and control most of the season in his first full campaign back from Tommy John surgery, and with him especially poor in the second half. Bradish, 30, needed nearly 60 pitches to get through three innings Saturday, allowing eight more hits and two more homers and clearly in distress, with innings of 20 pitches or more becoming more the norm.
Overmatched rookie skipper Craig Albernaz has been reticent to embrace the import of expanding his rotation and had largely rebuffed any notion of needing to watch inning limits - despite Bradish failing to log 40 innings in 2024 or 2025 with elbow discomfort the norm for him then (as he spoke about ). But with a $100M contract extension secured shortly before the trade deadline, it was clear this was coming to a head, and Albernaz started to change his tune some after Saturday's debacle.
"We talk through everything, and everything is on the table," Albernaz said of easing off Bradish. "But with KB, he's such a competitor and he's been our guy all year, so we feel comfortable giving him the ball every time he pitches."
Rather than move to a six-man rotation and be proactive , or start using more openers to cut down on workload, the Orioles got their 150 innings out of Bradish in a lost year (nearly 20 games off the pace in the American League East). Trying to get any more would have been beyond nave, even for this amazingly sophomoric front office.
Bradish picked up his 14th loss Saturday, walking the leadoff guy in the first and the second inning, and it only got worse from there. In his last nine starts (dating to late July) he has allowed 57 hits in 41 2/3 IP,with eight homers and a ghastly rate of 32 strikeouts to 19 walks. That's a 5.84 ERA and a WHIP of 1.85.
The Orioles are going to have to be smart about his offseason and making real improvements for 2027. Bradish is in the bottom 2% of all MLB pitchers in breaking ball run value and the bottom 13% in overall run value. He didn't get nearly as much swing-and-miss as at his peak (39th percentile) and is in the bottom quarter of all pitchers in walk rate. The rotation is going to need something close to an ace next season, whether they re-sign free agent Trevor Rogers or not, or whether baseball boss Mike Elias is able to keep firing underlings to keep his job or not.
Baltimore recalled reliever Yaramil Hiraldo to take his roster spot.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/orioles/onsi as Orioles Place Struggling Starter Kyle Bradish On IL, Ending Difficult Season For Former Ace .
